A refreshing dose of love

 A beautiful woman's beauty is nurtured and blossoms by the relentless stretch of appreciating words by her lover like a rose blossoms by the dewy intoxication during misty nights. But how long the poor lover can continue to shower the words of unquestioning praise?!! After caressing the rose, the lover also feels the pricks of reality around the beautiful flower. It is called the lover's awakening from the blindfolding slumber. So the words of all pervading praise dry up. The beauty sulks and her narcissism also feels deprived of its customary diet of acclaim. It is now better to go for a new lover. Because during the initial phase of courtship the new lover will again feed her narcissism to help it blossom at its peak again!

Truth

 There is no absolute truth. All we have is just a pliantly swaying sea of fractional truths. We draw out our share of truths from this sea that will be suitable and complement our sense of identity with the self, i.e., ego, our perception of the world, our vision of the world and the people around.

Judgments

 To arrive at a conclusion we use the tool of judgement. We simply pick out fault in others, the grey shady areas, and give a summary condemnation of someone. Ironically, that person is more than what we have chosen as witnesses against him in the fault basket. He has bright areas beyond the dark spots chosen by us. No wonder, our judgements are fractional, blind and nothing more than convenient tools to salvage our pride, vanity and ego.

The bedrock of vice

 Our routine habits are simply means to our mundane ends. Little little silly idiosyncrasies only. But some of them stand out more prominently to breed envy, anger, hate and malice. These are the bedrocks of vices. And vices are an end in itself.

The creeping desires

 Creeping civilization! To be an ultramodern successful creeper, we usually use our tendrils like tentacles to reach the wall of our goals. Our tendrils and tentacles latch onto the softest sinews, even if that means killing and suffocating the tiny offshoot that needs help and support itself, on the way to hit our post. Sometimes I think, after witnessing the rawest elements of nature, this creation is imbued with self interest, and our pretty human selfishness is just a portion of the infinite force of self-preservation that we see around. What do you think?

Belated greetings on the World Environment Day

 Wish you all a happy world environment day! Save trees, save mother Earth!

Let's celebrate the Environment Day! Mother earth is the root cause of all our joys. Go close to nature. She needs your healing touch. As Bond Sahab says:

"The more intimate you are with the natural world -- the world that exists without actually having to worry about how to exist -- the more we will come to terms with our own natures."

If Mother Earth stands any chance at all, it lies there if we treat each day of the year as the Environment Day. Everything less than it falls well short the least redemption.

Sow a seed of love. A seed that will one day sprout, spread, bloom, sway to the breeze. It will remain as your best footprint on the planet once you move ahead on your journey in a different dimension. Be a plant parent! Happy environment day to all!

How to become a god

 Our attachments, expectations and desires are the source of fear in us. We are afraid of losing what we have. And belief in external powers who can save us is nothing but a projection of our fear and phobias. Drive out fear from your every cell and you no longer need the concept of God in the clouds. You become one yourself!

The divine feminine

 Look around and you will find the woman, a representative of the divine feminine, is the stronger and superior force. Her gently flowing spirit, like cool waters, assuages the fire in man, the rugged representative of divine masculinity. She carefully douses the male fire. The burning volcano in him loses its flame. Yin energy, the pliable, soft, surrendering, receptive and yielding polarity of creation, unfailingly conquers yang, the hard knots standing at the rigid polarity on the other end. Holy waters are yin. Earth and stones are yang. The majestic serpentine curves of rivers are yin, the divinefemale. Its softness has the tightest grip. It wins and triumphs over solid most and hardest rocks. Mountains give in. A gentle stream slowly, imperceptibly wears and corrodes a mammoth mountain and writes its victorious tales in majestic valleys. Accept it O thou poor man, accept! Fire has to go; water has to flow!

The real lies

 The lies that we tell others are just a fraction of the lies which we tell to our own selves. Self-told lies are our fog spray that we sprinkle to keep the sun of truth in our soul hidden and allow us to embrace our pretending, fake self, our ego. All this feeds on the lies that we continuously tell ourselves.

Opening the secret of duality

 If you want to swim, accept drowning. If you want to fly, accept falling. To win, accept loss. To fulfillment, accept emptiness. The duality is bound by an unbreakable cord. Pull one, and the other one comes dragging. A win is not a win completely. You are losing something also, in some form or the other. No flight is a flight solely. It involves a fall also here and there. Swimming isn’t floating only. It involves intervals of drowning also. Accept the so called opposite, antipodal, the perceived enemy and the threat. Don’t run away from it. Success is not the absence of defeat. It’s only accepting defeat, learning further and moving on. Accept death and you live. Surrender and master the ownership of your thoughts, actions and emotions.

The real cowards

 The urge to dominate, the ambition of power, the desire for prestige, these are all driven not by strength, but by some inherent weakness, fragility, fear and imperfection. There is an inherent imperfection which drives grossly selfish acts. Stalin had very short legs in comparison to his upper body. When he sat on a chair, he looked damn funny as his legs fell short of the ground. We need not insult humanity anymore by even retelling the atrocities he perpetrated on his own people. Changez Khan won half of the world and slaughtered countless innocent human beings. He was so insecure of his death and mortality that he went on rampage to forcibly plant his biological seed across Asia. By an estimate, almost 8% of the Mongoloid people draw their genetic line from him. But even this large scale cropping won’t give him peace and security. He was so scared of his death that fearing some sabotage he never slept at nights. He just went paranoid and one night ran out of his tent, tripped, fell on an iron peg and died like a stray dog dies accidently.

The sage and the king

 There is an old ascetic staying very happily under a banyan. No material possessions, almost naked and no desires. The force of his wisdom is spreading far and wide. The King gets so impressed that he touches the saint’s feet and overcome by huge pangs of reverence for the sage asks the old mendicant to come and stay in his palace. He is sure that the ascetic is going to say a loud “no”. But then very surprisingly the old sage says “yes”. So it becomes a big news and the King is even feeling duped. The old friar comes to stay in the palace. In irritation the King is pouring more and more worldly comforts around the mendicant who never shows any unwillingness to roll over more and more in comfort. The sage is accepting all the worldly facilities on offer. The King’s agitation is turning into burning jealousy day by day. He starts condemning the sage as an impostor who has now forgotten all his wisdom after staying in the palace. The King’s anger reaches a breaking point and he condemns him as a disgrace in the name of monkhood and banishes him from the luxurious palace. Nothing changes in the old monk. He smiles and says, “Ok King, as you wish! I was just fulfilling your wish to offer me luxury.” Smilingly the old sage prepares to leave the King with a blessing and a little sermon:

“I stayed in your palace but your palace didn’t stay in me. I am not a lake, I’m a mountain. I enjoy the water falling all over me, cutting my sides, kissing the trees on my slopes. But I am not possessive to hold the waters back. I simply allow it to flow down. I don’t hold. I don’t pull back. I just let it be as it is supposed to be. The lake is hollow. It craves for fullness. It wants more and more water. It has to hold. It has to collect. It is attached to collection. But the water will in any way flow away. So there is pain at the exit. Hence it’s forever looking upland for more and more water. I allow the flow, so enjoy the process, the mix of past, present and future. The lake holds. It suffers. It hardly enjoys its present, its being.”

Love and hate

 Creation has just one source, single point of focus. Elixir of life and curse of death spring from the same source. The nectar and the poison originate from the same place. Life’s shadow is death, and death’s shadow is life. The perceived duality is a mental image projected in vacuum as we peer through the lens of “ego”, i.e., helpless bondage to the outermost layer, the grossest level of our material existence. The latter stands as the bridge to the shaky walk this way or the other. Break the bond and these drift away into non-existence. Love is tied to hate. And our “ego” is the rope, the bridge holding the two extremes of duality. Clinging to the two extremities, we have the option of treating one as the substance and the other as the shadow. If your ego allows love to be the substance, then hate turns a shadow. And vice versa. But in treating hate as the substance, we contradict the basic principle of nature. Hate is an exception, love is the rule at the cosmic level. Endless swathes of cosmic tranquility into fathomless depths cannot sustain without inherent love, peace and harmony. By hating we are putting a roadblock, a speed-bump in the path of infinite space-time continuum. Through love we speed up the cause of evolution. In choosing love and the elixir of life, we add to the inherent cosmic harmony. In hating we add to the cosmic explosions and accidents.

Rotdu dog

 Barking is synonymous with being a dog. They just love barking! God knows whether it’s out of anger, joy, fear, need or frustration. While the rest of them are in a merry chorus, as we humans get jittery during Corona times accompanied by dozens of mild earthquake tremors in the Delhi NCR, indicating all is not well under the earth, this brown-white dirge singer has his own ludicrously howling composition. It appears as if he is offering his doomsday song well in advance. While, the rest of them go into long spells of yodeling and barking in varying joyful notes, as if they can smell the soon to break in fault-line underneath, this champion vocalist but stays on his same old frequency. While the rest of them are shouting ecstatically, we can pick out this one’s piteous howls as if he wants to spoil their game.

Offer him a chapatti, its anxiety and god knows what pains spurt out through a sad whine that beats even the customary dog’s tail-wagging on being offered food. So the moment you offer it a chapatti, it will start eating but give you a guilty feeling as if you have given it something very bad in taste. It whimpers, whines and then lets loose a screeching note of howl in gratitude. May be he is not comfortable with anything at all in the canine as well as our human world around and goes cursing. Eh, the perennial naysayer!

Growling also is the sovereign right of a dog. They assert their arrogant dogliness through it. What dog is that which doesn’t growl? This one doesn’t. He can’t even if he tries. Because the moment he puts pressure on his vocal chords, the muscles appear to have stuck up at one place to give the same very old whine, whimper and howl. Suppose some skinny outsider dog enters the locality and all the natives are barking out their machismo spirit at full speed, and there being almost no danger as the skinny outsider cowers in the street drain, this champion participates in the defensive force with his full-hearted wretched howls, as if he is on the side of the pinned down outsider. In this he unsettles many of his companions, who give a break to their lungs and actually stare at him to find out if they have bitten their own buddy by mistake. His lowest of a rumble automatically catches onto a sad song of pain and cries.

When a weirdly dressed gypsy hawker enters the locality, the dog squad gives more pressure to their coiled tails and set after barking in a line after the hawker nomad. He doesn’t mind their barking. He walks confidently, thinking of himself a majestic elephant who isn’t bothered about barking pathetic dogs. They on their part think this strange one will have a share in their chapattis and ladies so needs to be thrown out at the earliest. The nomadic hawkers hardly bother about barking dogs. But even he is forced to abandon his detachment from such mundane settlers’ ways and look behind carefully, his ears picking the piteous howling cries among the proudly ringing din. May be some aloof and unattached gypsy will also start crying after hearing these sympathetic notes. Wonder of wonder, the poor fellow actually believes that it’s barking as can be seen from its taut coil in the tail and proud bearing during the citadel defense. It can’t help if it comes out as a whimpering, irritating howl. May be some unique vocal filter fixed by nature to do some experiment!

The rest of them have wide range of vocals to vent out a range of emotions from the best to the worst. But this one’s joy, sadness, curiosity and of course frustration are all expressed in the same crying tone. His groans give a clue to his discontentment with life. Suppose a dog fellow approaches him with the intention to play, this one reciprocates with his own innocent intention to play. But how will he stop his sad howling. Those playful sighs again come out as piteous scary whines and whimpers and the fellow leaves him, accusing him of being a habitual crier.

Amidst all his teary whimpers, he is a loser in love game also as can be expected. During the mating season, the dandies break many a moon to woo their sweethearts. This one also, driven by his biological instincts, tries the same. But the lady runs away during the foreplay itself as his pining moans start with piteous howls as if she has just pierced his heart with her paw. You have to believe me on this. I have actually seen it happening. Otherwise, why would I be interested in maligning his character on social media? I call him Rotdu, habitual crier, by the way!

You are a winner

 Why should winning be just defined by finishing the line ahead of others? Finishing the line with your best, even if it means coming last in the list, is also a win. And beyond finishing, the will to touch the line, even if you fall on the way, is a win. And even the will to participate is a win. And if you don't participate at all and do something else that also is winning. Why talk of defeats? It's winning-winning all the way, in one form or another. Because to be alive itself is a win. Life is a winsome game in totality. Count all your disasters, tragedies and pains. Add them. However high the sum is, it will still fall short of nullifying the big positive number, life. You all are winners I tell you.

Trees are holier than human saints

 I am sure most of us have seen a sweet-sour tug of war among a group of trees in a narrow space. Much as different trees push and prod to kiss the sunrays, they are ready to recede and be on the backfoot at the same time. They are ready to take frontfoot with as much enthusiasm as they are ready to go on backfoot. Much as they try their level best to go straight to kiss the rays of survival, they are equally prepared to bend down to the necessity and take a detour in the face of obstruction. It’s a beautiful balance between surging ahead and surrender. All this is beyond winning and losing, a marvelous equilibrium. Ego, the phantom malady of we humans, cannot survive on such a beautiful line drawn with unqualified composure. No wonder, it’s beyond winning and losing. These are the fallacious categories mischievously hatched by the existential forces to put testing hurdles on the path of our evolution. It’s as simple as a constraint on a plant or tree that faces natural limits and hurdles to its growth. A plant grows egolessly, unaware of the terms of winning and losing, and hence there is hardly any suffering in its journey. We are a bit more aware egoistic plants, popping out to grow and be so much more aware to lose this restricting ‘limited awareness’ of cutting down reality in poor fractions. To be frank, a plant or tree appears more evolved than us in this regard. What we aim to gain after intense spiritual practices is naturally available to a tree. So who is more evolved? In my opinion, it’s the tree! In fact, the spiritual model of evolution—in which we take mankind as the more evolved species after having traversed through the lower realms of plants and animals—may indeed be the reverse. Like, we may be at the base and by shedding our illusionary mindwork, we are moving to higher states of egolessness, crossing over to animals to trees to grasses to dust to nothingness, on the path to become part of everything by shedding all sense of ‘I, My and Me’. I at least feel like worshipping trees more than I feel prostrating before any of the so called holiest feet on earth.

Don't be a lone wolf

 "The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives." We have evolved like herd animals. We need to fit in a larger group to survive by bonding with others. We need respect in a group. We need sweet approval from our family, friends and peer groups. Don't commit the mistake of going separate from your  sweet little tribe. It might literally mean a death sentence. So many lonely people die unnaturally. So enjoy sweet collaboration and bond with your little group for safety and opportunities. It's one of the most basic laws of prevailing as an individual as a part of trusting group.

A poet batting on a slippery wicket

 

The tiles are getting so oily smooth in fashionable houses that I have to walk like a heavily pregnant penguin waddling on the Antarctic ice to avoid a fall. But we are up for leaving a grand impression on the house fashion scene, or for that matter in all types of fashion in all spheres of life. That's being cultured; otherwise you are a Sentinelese prehistoric tribal in the Andaman and Nicobar chain of islands. In fact, the floor tiles have become so slippery these days that I feel like a goat being taken to a slaughter house if some fashionable person invites me to their house.

But credit goes to we humans. We are a gutsy race. We take risks. We are ready to take the risks of broken bones for being most fashionable in the neighborhood. And so many slip and break their bones in fact. What floor is any worth if it doesn't carry the slipping potential and break bones and wink with a flashy smile as you fall? And we shouldn't forget that broken bones are a boon for the medical fraternity.

What car is worth its tyres if it can't go like a rocket and carry the prospect of trampling as many as possible on its glorious journey? But the naughty trampling cars are a boon for the insurance industry. Isn’t it?

What music is worth its rhythmic hop if it can't burst a few eardrums? What dress is worth its salt if it doesn't make you look like someone from the farthest galaxy? And the dress that actually covers the body is no dress, it's an old hag. So poor clothing is up for a big challenge. It has to show all and still appear to hide everything. So we are busy fixing it. It's a very serious question. How much of cloth goes off from the bum-side to cover the soles of feet. Or how much goes from the chest to cover armpits. One half of the mind working overtime to bare all, while the other half trying to devise an airy dress to avoid a complete fall. Imagine how much creativity it requires! What an art man!

And what is this boring, old-model plain skin? It's a big canvas for art. Why waste paper for painting when we have our dear skin ready for the sadistic pleasure of the tattooing needle? So human body is the canvas now. Some tattoos go deep in the skin in proportions to the transient emotions in the heart. But we have shifty hearts. So when the clouds of emotions scatter and take a new shape, the poor tattoo taunts as a sign of infidelity. So it has to be vanquished. So tattoo removers have become as important as tattoo makers. The other day when I put out my hand to give some money to a beggar I got a shock. He had a dragon on his hand. He appeared so empowered in comparison to me. My poor non-tattooed hand won't dare to go ahead. So I just walked away. When I see people with their sophisticated tattoos coming on the way, I involuntarily find myself moving away in awe and wonder to give them space to walk. They appear a completely new race to me the old model. Maybe tattooed bums, biceps, breasts and tummies have gone berserk and are now revolting to claim new versions after getting fed up with their boring old self.

And what gun is a gun that can't pierce a hill from a distance? So the human mind is making the best of a gun. But then what bulletproof jacket is that which can't stop a cannon ball on the chest. So one half of our collective brain is making the deadliest gun, while the other half is busy in making the best of bulletproof jackets.

We are a very busy race. We can't stop. We have to scatter litter in the first place, so that we can devise the most efficient ways of waste management. We ought to rechristen ourselves as busy-sapiens now. We have to first go into war and killings and then make UN and the entire set of peace talks and diplomatic corps for peaceful negotiations.

I sometimes wonder maybe we are basically looking to create more avenues for problems, so that the genius of the human brain can be actualized in managing those problems. I think the autonomous human mind is smartly using the slavish human body for experiments, like we do with the toads on dissection tables, putting us in weirdest situations just to find whether there is a solution to this and that. What an experiment going on! It really is a big drama.

A bat and ball in place of guns and grenades

 

Congratulations Afghanistan! During the ongoing one day cricket world cup they have defeated two former champions. October 23 would stand as a millstone for the war-torn country when they defeated Pakistan. They needed this victory far more than Pakistan. A bleeding land suffering from wars, famines, killings, poverty and all that can plague a society. Just imagine the joy and happiness in bullet-scarred little mud-houses across Afghanistan! Men, women and children getting a rare opportunity to feel proud of their nation. An exceptional event when they can shout with joy. Such events can trigger a turning point in a country's history. The youth can think of bat and ball instead of guns and bombs. Sports sow the seeds of hard work and discipline among the youth. It sets up a stage for dreaming big. I’m really happy for them! But I have my sympathies for Pakistan also. They still have the option of winning all their remaining games to stay in the competition.

There is a very-very exceptional blast of happiness and public jubilation in Afghanistan. In Kabul the fans honked car horns, danced and played loud music. I think even Taliban would have felt like celebrating on the occasion. Why be so stern and serious when the entire nation feels like singing and dancing? I’m not for gunfire on any occasion. But celebratory gunfire following a victory on the sporting field surely removes a few bullets from the ammunition dump which would have tasted human blood. So it’s good riddance.

The seeds are always very small but they have the potential to sire big crops, trees, forests. Let’s hope this little seed of victory on the sporting field sires Afghan resurgence. Such sporting upsets by the cricketing underdogs are more than welcome. They don’t have the infrastructure. But it shows how resilient the Afghan people can be. All out aggression breeds fanaticism. But controlled aggression on the sporting field fetches glory and joy for the impoverished masses. As they celebrated I am sure many bleeding hearts must have forgotten the decades-long mayhem. They hunt as a spinning wolf pack headed by the wonderful Rashid Khan. Spinning a ball is far better than spinning a grenade. Hitting a six is more effective than firing a rocket launcher.

A pilgrimage

 

I had the luck to go on a pilgrimage to Gaumukh in the second half of October. I saw Maa Ganga's two temples: a glacial one at Gaumukh and a man-made shrine at Gangotri. The former for a journey within; the latter for finding your footing on the ladder of faith before you dive within. As you walk in the opposite direction to Her powerful currents, She cleanses you of darkness. She roars past you, outshouting the demons within you. It seems as if She is ferociously rushing past you to decimate the backstabbing illusions following you. She sprays Her divine waters to cleanse your little-little mistakes and stumbles that we unjustifiably term as sins. She emboldens you to stumble over stony path to finally find your footing, like a mother looking over her toddler falling while learning to walk. She wants your tired legs to know the importance of pause and rest in the art and craft of walking (life). As She powerfully cuts massive mountains, it seems as if a strong mother is assuring Her children,  'I will cut a valley for you. I will lay a path for you.  You just learn to walk!' And once you get the lesson and complete the little assignment given by Her, She is there with Her motherly smile to welcome you in Her man-made shrine.